"This game captures the feeling of [this other thing, such as a piece of media] that I enjoy, and thereby some of my enjoyment of [the other thing] is applied to the game."
Two questions:
Have you experienced this?
Have attempts to evoke this ever interfered with your enjoyment of a game?
@LeviKornelsen 1) Yes, absolutely, at least twice: first with the Buffy TVS RPG and then, years later, with the Alien RPG.
Yeah, fairly early in my gaming life, with the TMNT and Other Strangeness RPG. This was before the Turtles were a cartoon franchise, but even leaning on the comics gave too narrow an experience of what I just wanted to be a cool mutant animals game (like the way your career was like 85% likely to be "ninja").
@LeviKornelsen
Yes.
No. However, I'd say the "it's the <other media work> ttrpg" isn't the clear communication / pitch it seems to be, that is a trap. Especially if the ttrpg's author(s) aren't familiar with different styles of rpg.
No — or at least the only time I’ve experienced something like this was when I and the game designer had a vastly different interpretation of the source material.
@LeviKornelsen The games that I feel really work well at this are the Powered-by-the-Apocalypse games. But given how freely the license is up for use, there's a grab-bag of quality.
The high-end stuff like Monster of the Week (one of my favorite games and probably the best PbtA) exists alongside middling examples like Dungeon World and practically zero-effort examples like "Magical Fury".
@LeviKornelsen I would say that is how themes in board games largely work. Players transfer their knowledge (and occasionally emotional attachment) of the game's theme to the mechanisms and gameplay itself.
If there are enough points of recognition, it feels 'thematic'. Some even call it 'immersive'.
If there aren't, the theme feels 'pasted on'. This can happen when a very emotionally charged theme is coupled with a mechanically heavy game. I guess when you (expext to) feel emotionally affected by the theme, having to simultaneously think deeply about the game's mechanisms feels incompatible.
Darktide fits both criteria. It's Warhammer 40k, so massive draws on the lore, which was my main attraction to the game.
The game is an absolute mess. Buggy, cut scenes that can barely run, a story that's so poor it should have been left out, crashes if you sneeze too hard, literally can take up to 20 minutes to load each time a server hamster passes out, and yet...
Once you get into the game and start fighting they rendered the world so well that it almost seems worth the bugs. It still crashes and stutters and feels janky as fuck and you just wanna throw your keyboard through the screen, but then you get a chainsword and everything clicks.
It's like finding a kilo of PCP laced weed behind a 7-11 dumpster. It's trash, you know it will probably kill you, but you can't stop smoking it for some reason.
@LeviKornelsen Yes, a good example of both is Star Wars.
The FFG’s Edge of the Empire feels very Star Wars to me and I enjoy it.
Whereas d20 Star Wars didn’t, and it felt like a struggle to run/play.
@LeviKornelsen I've been able to squint and do that with some games. Esp wrt char creation.
When you say attempts, do you mean attempts on my part to evoke this, or attempts on the devs/writers?
I've found that if I create a character intended to evoke something, I can end up interfering with my own enjoyment if I hold on too tightly to that idea.
But I think that's part of a bigger issue where sometimes one needs to let go of preconceived notions as a player, and go with the flow.
Yes. Most notably with the original Star Wars RPG, and the more recent Star Trek Adventures, but I could list more.
Also, yes. @rivetgeek mentioned the Palladium Robotech RPG. A more recent example for me is The Expanse RPG. I think I might like it just fine if it wasn't The Expanse, but I don't like level based design for most IPs, and certainly not for The Expanse.
Kind of? I'm not sure I like the word feeling here, which is why I'm hedging, because what I've experienced is primarily intellectual. The game captures the themes, or the aesthetic, or some specific aspect of the media which I can recognize and enjoy that recognition, or that helps me better understand the media. Play always FEELS like play to me, not something else.+
I have failed to fully enjoy games that attempt to invoke this, but not BECAUSE they attempt it. It's usually better explained by someething about that specific attempt that didn't land for me. Like, I've played games that felt more like The Expanse to me than the official Expanse RPG because what I dig about the novels and TV show isn't what the official RPG is concerned with.
@LeviKornelsen I felt that way with Star Wars d20. The way they handled Force users was an incredible balance, IMHO. There's also so much to the universe that it's easy to be as much or as little involved in the canon as your table wants.
@LeviKornelsen On the other hand, Lankhmar treatments in both Savage Worlds and DCC both did work well for me, obviously for totally different reasons.
@LeviKornelsen When there's a gross mismatch of system to IP, it can be jarring enough I don't like it. ElfQuest RPG (BRPG) really wasn't a good fit for me. Still love ElfQuest, still like BRPG, but this was not a chocolate and peanut butter situation for me.
@LeviKornelsen Yes, often with Anime inspired games. Generally they tend to get (with some exceptions*) that they are adapting a more cinematic medium to a tabletop environment, and start with that assumption at it's core, before moving outwards to whatever genre conventions they're trying to emulate.
@LeviKornelsen I've seen this a couple times, and the thing I'm wondering is whether or not it's even desireable to "faithfully" capture the feeling of a specific other piece of media.
Taking inspiration and using that feeling to build an experience is absolutely valuable, but I tend to think that the way media feels is a bit like how a meal tastes. You can't really reproduce it just by observing it, you need the recipe if you want to get it right.
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